Blue Diary

CHARLOTTE KITE SMITH, STOOD UP by her best friend and her soon-to-be-ex-husband on the very same day, is a smart woman, one who is well aware that there are some losses an individual simply has to accept. She believes that bad fortune is a wake-up call and that most people would do well to have their eyes open. Those who were dreamers often wound up as sleepwalkers and Charlotte is not about to become one of them. She’s a practical woman who’s learned not only to curb her resentments, but has managed to temper her hopes for the future as well. Today during her physical, for instance, she wasn’t surprised when her doctor suggested a biopsy for the lump that she’d found. Nothing has worked out quite as she'd expected: why should her body be any different? She had thought at this stage she’d have half a dozen children, when in fact she’s living in her house on Hilltop alone. Through the years she’s learned not to assume that she’s already had her portion of bad luck, even though she lost her parents when she was barely out of high school, one following the other in a matter of months, and has recently gone through a prolonged and complex breakup with Jay. In Charlotte’s opinion, suffering is not the border on the outer edges of one’s life, but the cloth itself, elegantly stitched on one side, crude and miserably sewn on the other.

But who can dwell on such disappointments? Certainly not Charlotte Kite. It’s a beautiful evening, far too rare and fine for her to waste feeling sorry for herself When she looks out the window of her house high on Hilltop, she can see the whole town before her, a grid of deep blue shadows and sparkling light, as though diamonds have been thrown down in the hillocks beyond the trees. Tonight, Charlotte runs a cool bath to wash away the scent of chocolate and rum that clings to her from the day’s baking. She’s used to spending her evenings alone, but perhaps her loneliness is the reason she continues to work at the bakery so faithfully, though it is now one in a chain of many and can handily be run by accountants and bakers who know the recipes and the business far better than Charlotte herself does. Still, she does not wish to pass her days alone as well as her nights. It’s a big house she lives in, built at the turn of the century as a wedding present for Ella Monroe, whose father founded the town and left a ring of apple trees a mile wide around the old abandoned house where he once lived, smack at the end of King George’s Road, a location that was wild frontier at the time, when it wasn’t unusual for bears to eat their fill from the orchards and bobcats to claw at the bark of the saplings.

Charlotte’s house is so large there are rooms she hasn’t been in for months; the entire third floor, which might have been perfect for a nursery, has been closed down and even the cleaning service won’t venture up there. Too many spiders, they complain. Not enough light.

So many of the girls Charlotte grew up with had been jealous when she’d married Jay Smith at the age of nineteen, the year after her parents died, but those girls are now grown women who consider themselves lucky that Jay passed them by. He seems to be a man who’s constitutionally incapable of fidelity; in the interest of a peaceful parting, Charlotte has decided that in his case adultery should not be viewed as a lack of character, but rather as a hereditary defect, clearly evident in Jay’s father, who, at the age of seventy-eight, is still chasing the ladies, marrying for the fourth time only weeks before he entered a nursing home.

Jay can’t even be depended upon to come and pick up the last of his belongings, which was supposed to have been done this evening. Charlotte had hoped they might have one final dinner together to celebrate the end of their fruitless union. It’s true, every now and then she wonders if his passion for her could ever be reignited, about as likely a possibility as a bear knocking at her front door and asking directions to Hamilton. When Jay doesn’t show up, Charlotte takes her bath, and afterward phones in an order to the Pizza Barn. By now, she doesn’t have to give her address. The counterman knows who she is: he even asks if she wants extra cheese, per her usual. When the delivery boy, Brendan Derry. arrives, Charlotte tips him twenty dollars. She does it not to spite Jay. who is notoriously cheap, but to see the grin on Brendan’s face. How lovely that someone can feel joy over such a little thing. How wonderful to know there are still some people in this world who can manage to be happy.

Charlotte eats pizza out of the box on the floor of her bedroom. Because of the size of the house, she likes to cocoon in the one room where she feels most comfortable, and so she’s there, munching on crusts and going over some paperwork, when she happens to glance up at the eleven o’clock news, thereby learning that her best friend’s husband has been arrested for murder that very morning, in the doorway of his own house. Charlotte’s initial reaction to the news is helped along by the slices of pizza she has consumed, far too many, as well as the hour, far too late for someone who wakes at five A.M. But perhaps what makes Charlotte ill is the mere idea that on a perfectly ordinary night, as June bugs hit against the window screens and the whole world smells of honeysuckle, there is no protection from disaster.

Whatever the cause, Charlotte goes into the bathroom; she holds back her red hair and vomits, then washes her face with cool water. When she returns to the bedroom, she searches her closet for a crumpled pack of cigarettes she keeps for occasions such as this. Quickly, she lights up, then grabs the phone and dials Jorie, whose number she knows so well she could recite it in the depths of her sleep. The TV is still on, filling the bedroom with wavering light. It’s turned on in houses all over town, as well, illuminating living rooms and bedrooms in the old section of town and up here in Hillerest. Even those residents who usually go to bed early stay up late on this strange and singular night; they wake their husbands or wrives and say. Look at this, mostly because they find themselves doubting their own vision, obscured by the snaky blue images on their TVs, wondering if their sight is failing.

But what they see on their screens is real, there’s no denying that fact. It’s a portrait of Ethan Ford in an old photograph, when he was a good fifteen years younger, a likeness that glides through the air, circulating past apple trees and telephone wires, drifting through town like a fine rain over people’s rooftops. This handsome and familiar man, boyish but still recognizable, startles people as they walk to the bathroom to brush their teeth and makes them forget the simplest of tasks. Cats are not put out for the evening, sleeping children are not checked upon, husbands and wives are not kissed good night.

Residents of Monroe are stunned by the possibility of something amiss. This is a safe village, far from the crime of Boston, and yet tonight many will lock their doors, some for the first time in years. They’ll use bolts they had previously judged to be pointless and make certain to secure their windows in spite of the fine weather. Not that everyone in town believes what they see on the news. Warren Peck’s father, Raymond, who helps his son out at the Safehouse Bar every now and then, and whose wife Margaret’s heart attack might have been fatal had Ethan not been so quick to arrive on the scene, applauded when Warren threw a pitcher at the TV perched above the bar during the news broadcast, so outraged were they by what were obviously bald-faced lies. Neither old Raymond nor Warren took the time to think about how the TV screen would splinter, however, smashed into thousands of shards, leaving customers to find slivers of glass in every bowl of peanuts and cashews set out during happy hour the following week.

Charlotte lets the phone go on ringing even when it becomes clear that Jorie isnt going to answer. She sits on the floor next to her bed, smoking one cigarette and then another, thinking about the last time both couples had gone out together, to DiGorina’s Restaurant in Hamilton. Ethan and Jorie couldn’t seem to stay away from each other that night. Their behavior was nothing unexpected for people in love a few kisses, hands on each other’s legs, whispered jokes no one else was privy to but sitting there with Jay didn’t make their display any easier for Charlotte. She remembers thinking how unfair it was for Jorie to have wound up with everything. They’d both had hopes, hadn’t they? They’d both deserved happiness, and yet their fates hadn’t been measured out in even amounts. Charlotte recalls exactly how sharp her envy had felt that night, little pinpricks that caused her great pain.

“Do you care?” Big mistake. Never ask a question you don’t want an answer to. And never tell bad news to someone who’s already walked away She had mentioned her doctor’s appointment to Jay the last time he came by to pick up a suitcase full of clothes, but he clearly doesn’t remember, and why should she expect him to? They have been little more than roommates for quite some time.

Charlotte pulls on a pair of jeans and a tee-shirt and takes her cigarettes from the night table. She goes downstairs, through the darkened hall, then into the kitchen, which Ethan remodeled two years earlier. He’d done a great job, installing granite countertops. along with cherrywood cabinets that open without a sound, and a floor fashioned from terra cotta tiles. The truth of it is, there were days when Charlotte had rushed to get dressed in order to hurry downstairs in the pale morning light and drink a cup of coffee with Ethan before she went off to work. Listening to the birds who were waking in the trees, standing so close to him, she was afraid he would hear her heart pounding. Throughout the day her thoughts would return to him, and she couldn’t put aside the way she felt when she brought him to mind, a mixture of deep pleasure and guilt.

As for Ethan, he never seemed to notice her attraction to him. He treated her as though she were his wife’s best friend, which, of course, was exactly what she was. In a way, she'd been relieved when he’d finished with the job, and she’d never bothered to call him back when it turned out the sink had been installed incorrectly, phoning Mark Derry, the plumber, directly to ask if he’d stop by and make the repairs. She hadn’t wanted to see Ethan in her kitchen again or feel her pulse quicken when he was close by and from then on she avoided him. Maybe she’d been afraid of what irretrievable thing she might say or do, distrusting her own uncultivated desires as if they were a flock of wild birds let loose, the sort you could never catch once they’d been freed, not if you chased them to the farthest corners of the Commonwealth.

Tonight as she locks her house before heading over to Jories, Charlotte thinks about the brittle wedge of resentment she’d felt earlier when Jorie hadn’t shown up at the bakery. She had planned to tell Jorie about the lump that she’d found, for she’d needed an optimist’s embrace, and Jorie always managed to see the best in every situation. Now Charlotte understands why Jorie never arrived. She’d been down at the county offices, on King George’s Road, caught up in the turmoil of something gone so haywire, no one in the town of Monroe ever would have imagined the way her day would begin and how it would end.

The newscaster had said Ethan was being detained in regard to a murder that had taken place fifteen years earlier, not that Ethan Ford was his true name. It was nothing more than an identity he’d purchased for two hundred dollars. The real Ethan Ford, the one whose social security number this man had been using ever since his arrival in New England, had died in his crib thirty-nine years ago on a summer night in Maryland; he had not lived past his first birthday. Now, as the evening cools down, Charlotte walks out of her house and across the lawn beneath a ceiling of stars and confusion. If she believes what has been reported tonight, then perhaps anything is possible. She might turn onto Front Street and fall headlong into the ether. She might take a single step and find there are constellations swirling beneath her feet as well as up above, in the black and endless sky.

Usually, most houses were dark at this hour, but tonight people in Monroe were staying up late; even those who believed in early to bed and early to rise were drinking coffee and trying their best to puzzle things out. They’re caught up in something they’ve always believed couldn’t happen anywhere close by, not in Monroe, where there are only eight men on the police force and no one frets when children play outside after dusk. Those who knew Ethan Ford best of all—his friend Mark Derry, for instance, or the lawyer Barney Stark, who’s been his fellow coach at Little League for the past six years, or the valiant members of the volunteer fire department. who have time after time entrusted their lives to him—feel as though they’d been hit hard, right in the stomach, so that it is now impossible for these men to draw a breath without pain.

Barney Stark assumes he’ll step in as Ethan’s attorney, just as he had two years ago, when the Jeffrieses over on Sherwood Street sued Ethan after their house burned down. True enough, Ethan had refinished their basement and, therefore, the Jeffrieses had been quick to blame the blaze on the insulation he’d installed. That Ethan had helped to extinguish the Jeffrieses’ fire, putting his own life at risk, meant nothing to Roger Jeffries and his wife. Dawn. They were days away from a court date when the insurance company found that the fire had started in the Jeffrieses’ teenaged son’s bedroom. The case was dropped when the boy himself, a gawky, shy sixteen-year-old, finally admitted he had fallen asleep while smoking in bed.

Like everyone else close to the Fords, Barney hasn’t had any luck reaching Jorie. The wires have been jammed since the news-cast, with Jorie’s sister, Anne, setting her phone on automatic redial. But after a while, even single-minded Anne realizes that Jorie has decided not to answer, and figures it’s best to wait until morning. Barney, however, does not yield so easily He’s a worrier, a good and thorough man, the sort of individual who gets in his car and drives over to the Fords’, just to make certain he isn’t needed. Lights have been left on inside the house, but the curtains are drawn, and no one answers when Barney knocks at the door. He smells something he doesn’t recognize. Noneysuckle, perhaps. A sweet summer night. From what he can gather from the news-cast, there is some evidence that connects Ethan to a murder in Maryland—he was in the town where it happened and abandoned his truck there, a vehicle that recently had been pulled out of the sludge when a local swimming hole was drained—but this is circumstantial evidence, the sort of half-truth that gets innocent men sent away for crimes they would hardly be able to imagine, let alone commit.

“Do you know if anybody’s home?” Barney waves to make sure he’s made contact, because you never can tell with Kat Williams. She’s the kind of child who makes Barney nervous, a wild card you can never trust to act like a child, alternately older and younger than her age. Thankfully, Barney’s own daughters are calm, predictable girls, although he’s none too thrilled that his eldest girl, Kelly, is friendly with Kat’s sister, who has a reputation for her rude behavior as well as her beauty. Sorry to say, but when it comes to Rosarie Williams, Barney can see nothing but trouble ahead. “No one’s answering when I knock.” Barney calls to the girl who’s watching him.

“That’s because they don’t want to see you,” Kat calls back across Mrs. Gage’s lawn. Kat has been catching fireflies, and there is a jam jar at her feet that glitters with light. Tonight there were so many fireflies flitting across the lawns and among the leaves of the hedges, Kat hadn’t even needed to chase them, the way she and Collie usually did. She’d just opened her hands and they’d flown right in. “You’d better go away.”

Kat has Band-Aids on both her legs that she’s fiddling with; she isn’t pretty or athletic, and she has a peevish expression on her face. but she doesn’t miss much, and in this case, she definitely has a point. In Barney’s estimation, Kat Williams probably has the makings of an excellent attorney. She’s a smart cookie, that much is evident. Barney prides himself on his ability to read people. If anyone can judge who’s being forthright, it’s Barney, whose own daughters call him the Great Detecto behind his back. The Stark girls know they can’t get away with the slightest fib in their house, not even those small, white lies, such as who left the dirty dishes in the sink or who was responsible for a rash of long-distance phone calls.

In court, Barney can easily distinguish between who’s telling the truth and who’s not. What people say about a liar not being able to look you in the eye isn’t truc. A liar will stare at you and tell you he’s a polar bear or the king of France; he’ll swear on his dear mother’s life that he’s an innocent man. No, Barney can gauge when the truth is omitted, because if you watch closely you’ll see that a liar’s eyes tend to move back and forth, as if, while he speaks to you, he’s already looking for the pathway to his escape. All liars are ready to break and run. They don’t sit on their porches, glaring at you, globes of fireflies at their feet.

“No maybes about it.” Kat’s mouth is set in a thin line and her shoulders are hunched over. Her certainty touches Barney. He thinks of his daughters, sweet girls who’ve never had to suffer a day in their lives. Kat Williams knows too much about sorrow. It wasn’t that long ago when Barney used to see Aaron Williams out here in the evenings with his new lawnmower, most often tackling Betty Gage’s lawn along with his own, simply to be neighborly. Barney supposes Mrs. Gage has to hire someone these days, most likely one of those boys trying to get close to Rosarie, although it seems as if no one’s been mowing the Williamses’ lawn lately; it’s a patchwork of weeds and black brambles. Vines have begun to grow over the shrubbery, weaving in and out of the polite quince leaves and the wel-mannered rhododendrons. Rose canes are dark and bare, even though the growing season is said to be excellent this year.

But Katya doesn’t recognize him, although he’d often come to call during the last weeks of Aaron’s life. Those days were a blur, best forgotten, and all Katya sees is a man posted in front of the Fords’ house. Immediately, she takes him for the sort of rubber-necker who gets a thrill from the sight of other people’s blood. They had a taste of that themselves last summer. People would stand on the sidewalk and stare at the garage, they’d drive past slowly, observing the house the way other people might study a natural disaster, a hurricane. perhaps, or a flash flood. Late at night, there were some who threw stones and shouted threats, and then, like the cowards they were, ran away to hide in the bushes as soon as the porch light was switched on. It’s no wonder Katya waves her hands at Barney as though shooing away flies, without so much as a hello.

After the Williamses’ door slams shut. Barney feels he should go after them and explain that he’s only come to help. He’s a good-hearted man who hates his actions to be misunderstood. too frequently the case when he’s at home with his wife, Dana. What he wouldn’t give for someone to talk to, to have someone who would really listen to the way he feels, deep inside. He lives in a house of chattering girls where there is never a moment of quiet until everyone is asleep. It’s only at those moments, while his daughters and his wife are dreaming, that he often realizes he hasn’t said a word all day.

Looking down Maple Street from his post outside the Fords’ house, Barney spies two cats in the road, lolling in the moonlight, as though they own the night world, two feline kings yowling at each other as they vie over the nesting birds in Mrs Gage’s cherry tree. There is no traffic, but an empty street can be deceiving. The reporters aren’t here yet, but they will be soon. A figure walks through the dark, and Barney realizes it’s Charlotte Kite who’s approaching. You can spot Charlotte anywhere because of that red hair of hers. and now she lights up the dark with both purpose and distress. She’s smoking a cigarette, although Barney cannot recall having seen her smoking before. He often sees her at the bakery when he stops there on his way to his office: he’s all but addicted to the cinnamon Danishes, even though he knows he could stand to lose a good fifty pounds.

Although he’s several years older than Charlotte and Jorie, he remembers them well from high school. Pretty girls he never would have stood a chance with, not even if they could have gazed into the future to predict he’d attend Harvard Law School and go on to live in one of those big houses in Charlotte Kite’s neighborhood out beyond Horsetail Hill. They wouldn’t have looked at him twice, not if he’d had a million dollars in his pockets and had gotten down on bended knee, begging for their attention. He’d had an especially big crush on Charlotte, an embarrassing fact he’s never mentioned to anyone. Certainly, he’d never dared to act on his pathetic desire, or ever imagined she might one day respond. He may have been a loser back in school, but nobody could call him stupid, not then and not now.

Charlotte is relieved. She herself has recently spent a small fortune on legal fees, and her only crime was marrying Jay. Of course they’ll need a lawyer. Charlotte has never paid Barney Stark any mind, but at this moment, in the dark, standing on the sidewalk facing Jorie’s house, their conversation feels oddly intimate. “You’re absolutely right. He’ll have to fight those crazy charges.”

“Will you look at that,” Barney says. He’s talking too much and he knows it, but he may never get another chance to have Charlotte Kite listen to him. He might as well take advantage of the moment, for it will surely never come again. “So bright you could read by the light of those bugs.”

Charlotte turns and looks him over. Barney lives two blocks away from her, in one of the brand-new pseudo-Victorians on Evergreen Drive, built a good century after the Monroe family went bankrupt and sold off parcels of land, but frankly. she doesn’t know much about him. She does take note of his Lexus, however. It’s a rather surprising choice for a large, plain man such as Barney, but perhaps he needs to show off his success. It’s all coming back to Charlotte; he was one of the kids people used to make fun of in high school. He was heavy and plodding and far too shy to ask out any of the girls. Now he’s rich and has three beautiful daughters, and Charlotte has nothing. “I’ll bet you’re one of those expensive lawyers, ”

“I’m sure they’d appreciate that.” Barney thinks of his daughters, safe in their beds, and he knows he won’t be able to sleep tonight. He’s something of an insomniac, and he often spends nights in an easy chair pulled up to the window in the living room. From the heights of his house on Evergreen Drive, beyond a hill where there used to be nothing but orchards, the very spot where Ella Monroe herself was married so long ago, he is always surprised to see a few lights blinking in Monroe after midnight. On street after street, there are sleepless, unhappy people, much like himself, trapped like fireflies inside their own houses.

“I think I see Jorie.” Barney has spotted a shadow in an upstairs window. The curtain moves in the breeze. A few faded cherry blossoms dip through the sweet, dark, honeyed air, and Barney inhales deeply. He thinks of the first time he saw Charlotte Kite, when she wasn’t more than fourteen. He thinks of the way her red hair gleams in the sunlight in the mornings, as she stands behind the counter in the bakery. He realizes that Charlotte smells delicious, her aroma much sweeter than the honeysuckle in the night air, as if she could never wash the scent of chocolate or the granules of sugar from her skin. Oh, how he wishes he could tell her what he’s thinking. He knows he has a foolish look on his face, the stupid expression of bliss.

“Oh, no, of course not.” Barney recalls that she’d said something like this to him once before, ages ago, when they were in school. Charlotte had dropped her books in a rush to get to class, and he’d knelt to help gather some of the fallen papers. She’d looked him straight in the eye and told him not to touch anything. He’d felt as though she’d burned him with a single remark. His fingertips had puckered and blistered afterward, and he’d had to dust his hands with baking soda to ease the pain, and tonight he feels the same way all over again. She can burn him with one word. Even now.

In fact, she has handled everything in her life. Charlotte is not and never has been the sort of person to say please any more than she is likely to say thank you, and she has very little pity for the meek and the mild. Still, tonight she feels a strange sort of empathy for Barney, with his expensive, ill-fitting suit and his Lexus parked at the curb. Moonlight spills across the lawns on Maple Street and what looks like little stars are floating right past, a wave of milkweed spores, luminous and mysterious as they drift through the dark. Charlotte can see that she’s bruised Barney Stark somehow. He’s the kind of man who wears his heart on his rumpled sleeve.

She goes into the kitchen, where she finds a box of cereal left out on the counter, along with two unwashed bowls. A mess such as this isn’t like Jorie, who is always so house-proud. As Charlotte continues on, she doesn’t have to look outside to know that Barney Stark is still there, waiting to make certain no one needs him before he goes home. A man such as this is a mystery to Charlotte. Why, he’s as much a riddle as the Sphinx in the desert. She cannot even imagine what it might be like to have a man who would stand by you, who’d love you for whoever you are.

The staircase is dim, and Charlotte keeps a hand on the wall to guide her. As she goes up to Jorie and Ethan’s bedroom, she feels a bit like a Peeping Tom, treading softly, roaming through the place uninvited, even though the house belongs to Jorie, who’s closer to Charlotte than she is to her own sister. The night is so strange she can’t help but wonder if they’ve all been hypnotized. There have been cases of people who shared the same dream, and maybe that’s what’s happened. Perhaps Charlotte and Barney Stark and Jorie are asleep, entering freely into one another’s dreams, walking down the same imagined empty streets, watching the same nonexistent news broadcasts, having conversations they would never be party to during the shining hours of daylight. If one of them wakes, surely the rest are bound to follow, jolted out of their slumber, panting for breath, frightened by how close they’ve come to disaster.

But when Charlotte peers into the bedroom, Jorie doesn’t have her head on the pillow, her breathing shallow, the way a dreamer’s is whenever the dream feels as real as everyday life, dreams of bread and butter, and of lives gone wrong, and of quiet houses where couples sleep through the night. No, this is no dream. Jorie is sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing the same clothes she’s had on since morning, her face drained, her beautiful golden hair lank as straw. Collie is the one who’s asleep in the big bed, but anyone can tell his rest is fitful, for he turns and pulls the quilt closer, then groans, a fluttering boy noise that causes a catch in Charlotte’s own throat.

“Of course it isn’t.” Charlotte usually expects the worst of people, but she’s more than willing to make an exception in Ethan’s case. There has to be someone worth trusting, hasn’t there? One man among them to whom even a disbeliever like Charlotte can pledge her faith. “The whole idea is insanity. Jay called me from the Safehouse. and everyone down there is outraged. Don’t worry about what people are thinking. Everyone knows they’ve got the wrong man.”

Charlotte and Jorie have known Dave Meyers, now the sheriff of Monroe Township, since grade school, and although that hadn’t stopped him from arresting Ethan, Dave certainly wasn’t able to look Jorie in the eye. I’m sorry, he’d muttered, as if his apology was worth anything.

As Jorie speaks of the morning’s events, her voice rises dangerously; and Charlotte nods at Collie, who starts in his sleep. The women retreat to the window seat Ethan built last year, making use of some old oak paneling he’d removed from the tumbled-down Monroe house, abandoned long ago on the outskirts of town. Jorie moves the curtains aside, and from where they sit she can spy a man on the sidewalk, peering up at them. It’s still hot outside and the man keeping watch wipes his face with a handkerchief “Don’t worry. It’s only Barney Stark.” Charlotte leans her elbows on the casement. Just as she suspected, Barney has stationed himself on the walkway. He’s taken off his loosened tie and stuffed it in his pocket, but he still looks awkward and overdressed and worried. Charlotte waves, and Barney cautiously waves back. “He’s come to see if you need help,” Charlotte tells Jorie. “The big oaf.”

“Right.” Jorie pulls at her tangled hair. She is frighteningly pale, as though her flesh has turned to fish scales, her blood to ice water. “They say he was in the same town where some girl was killed, but what does that prove? How many people pass through Monroe every day? Does that mean they’ve all murdered someone?”

Collie is deeply asleep now ; he turns and flings one arm over the side of the bed. Awake he is close to being a teenager, and the man he’ll become is evident in his rangy appearance. Odd how children look so much younger when they sleep; perhaps their slumbering forms are what prompt adults close by to try their best to protect them from every evil under the sun.

Jorie had cried in the car as she drove home from the jail, wanting to get it all out before she picked up Collie. Then she’d gone and broken down in the doorway of the Williamses’ house like a common fool, some poor woman who was at the mercy of whatever the fates might bring. She’d made herself stop, then had brought Collie home where she sat him down in the kitchen and told him that his father had been taken over to the county offices on King George’s Road. It was nothing for them to worry about, a few questions about a crime committed years ago, a thousand miles away, by someone else entirely. Life wasn’t fair sometimes, and this was one of those times. Sooner or later it would be sorted out, but until then they’d just have to get through it; they’d have to hold tight and wait for Ethan to be cleared of any charges. They’d have to stand by him till then.

It had been a horrible day for Jorie, most of it spent in a hallway at the county offices. She had tried to talk to Dave Meyers and to Will Derrick over at the county prosecutor’s office; she’d tried to make some sense of what was happening, but she’d gotten absolutely nowhere. When at last she demanded to see Ethan, who’d been brought down to a cell in the basement, she’d found she could not breathe. It was panic she was feeling, this drowning sensation that overwhelmed her. It was fear caught in her lungs where there should have been air, plain and simple as that.

She’d started crying then, stunned by his resolve and by the stark reality of the situation. Ethan had relented at last : he’d rested his head against the metal bars, and Jorie had done the same, and when she closed her eyes she could imagine they were far from this horrible place where they stood.

We’ll figure it out tomorrow, Ethan had promised Jorie before she left, and she had believed him, but now, sitting here with Charlotte, there seems too much to ever figure out. Jorie gazes at Collie’s sleeping face, at the pale skin, the fine features, the way he breathes so deeply as he dreams. She had been so sure of her everyday life- you wake up, you make coffee, you send those you love off to school and to work, there is rain or it’s sunny, you’re late or you’re on time, but no matter what. those who love you will love you forever, without questions or boundaries or the constraints of time. Daily life is real, unchanging as a well-built house. But houses burn; they catch fire in the middle of the night, like that house over on Sherwood Street where the son was smoking in bed and everything disappeared in an instant. No furniture, no family photos, only ashes. Well, it’s ashes Jorie tastes now, ashes in her mouth, on her hands, beneath her feet. The fire had come and gone, and she hadn’t even know it. She’d just stood there while it swept through the door.

When Jorie goes to the bathroom to wash her face and comb her hair, Charlotte follows. The night is like any other night of disaster, with every fact filtered through a veil of disbelief The rational world has spun so completely out of its orbit, there is no way to chart or expect what might happen next. Charlotte is reminded of the time in high school when their friends Lindsay Maddox and Jeannie Atkins were in a fatal car crash over on the highway. Everyone had difficulty getting over the shock of the accident, especially Jorie. who stopped eating and missed several weeks of school. It seemed so unfair that Lindsay and Jeannie would never get to finish senior year; they’d never graduate or kiss another boy or fulfill the promise of their lives. There is still a marker at the spot where the accident happened, and although Jeannie’s family moved to Florida, never to return to Monroe again, Lindsay’s mother continues to bring wreaths of flowers on the first of every month, bands of everlasting and sweetbrier and roses that she twists through the fence, unaware of whether or not there are thorns.

Every time Charlotte drives past, she remembers that she’s lucky. She was supposed to go with them that night, but her mother made her stay home because she was recovering from the flu and had a slight fever. Charlotte thinks about that whenever she’s home alone at night. She thinks about it right now. Good fortune can turn out to be bad, Charlotte knows that for a fact, and the luckiest among us can be ruined by chance: a simple wrong turn, a metal fence, a man who drives through town on a cold, foggy night.

In the harsh bathroom light it’s impossible not to notice the toll today has taken on Jorie. Still, she’s beautiful. even now. Charlotte understands why Ethan fell in love with her the first time he saw her. Charlotte herself was standing right next to Jorie, but she might as well have been invisible. She still remembers Ethan’s expression as he approached: the way he wanted Jorie was all over his face, his attraction as obvious as a drowning man’s prayer for solid land.

“Do you ever think of what your life might have been like if we hadn’t gone to the Safehouse that night?” Charlotte asks. They’re headed down to the kitchen, so that Charlotte can make them a pot of tea. “We could have gone bowling instead, or to a movie. One changed plan and your whole life would have been different.”

“I know I was.” Jorie sounds much more like herself now. She always had an assured manner, even when they were girls. That was one of the things Charlotte envied, how Jorie never seemed torn apart by doubt. “He hadn’t decided to stay in Monroe until the night we met. Did you know that? He was on his way to New Hampshire because a friend of his was working in Portsmouth and told him there was a lot of work to be found there. He was in Monroe for exactly one night.”

After the tea is ready, Charlotte decides to fix her friend some toast as well, having rightly assumed that Jorie hasn’t thought to eat supper. She suggests that Jorie go to the living room and lie down on the couch; Charlotte will bring in a tray. While the bread is browning, Charlotte takes the opportunity to tidy up the kitchen. She’s glad she hasn’t mentioned that her doctor insisted upon a biopsy; Jorie has more than enough to worry about. Charlotte refuses to think about her own problems as she washes out the cereal bowls and sweeps up the last shards of the broken coffee cup and gets the silver tray she gave them as a wedding present. She will think about this house, instead, about this kitchen. Everything here is top of the line, hand-crafted cabinets, a stainless steel stove that would suffice for a restaurant, slate countertops that shine with silvery mica. Ethan must have gotten it all at cost, but anyone can tell he designed this kitchen for the woman he loved. It’s the curved arches of wood above the windows, fine carpentry that must have taken weeks, that speaks of his devotion. It’s the inlaid pattern of light and dark squares on the floor, fitted with such care that the wood appears seamless, black and white bark grown together on the very same tree.

When she really thinks about it, Charlotte knows nothing about Ethan before that night when they first caught sight of him in the Safehouse. He arrived out of nowhere with no baggage and no tales to tell. Whatever he’d said about himself they would have gladly believed, for the past hadn’t mattered much back then. Charlotte and Jorie were both so young that all they cared about was the future. They couldn’t get to it fast enough, the sweet, unexplored empire of their dreams. And why shouldn’t they look forward? The present hadn’t seemed particularly interesting. Charlotte was working in her family’s bakery after her parents had passed on, just about the last thing she’d ever planned to do, and Jorie was teaching second grade at the Ella Monroe Elementary School. At that point, they were both convinced that love was a figment of other people’s imaginations, an illusion fashioned out of smoke and air that didn’t really exist, at least not in Monroe, Massachusetts, where they were acquainted with every available man and more than well aware of every flaw and every strike against him since kindergarten.

That night at the Safehouse, their meeting had truly seemed like fate, the way Ethan looked at Jorie, the way he asked if he could buy her something to drink, then had guessed what she wanted was white wine, as if he already knew her preferences. Jorie wasn’t the sort of girl who was inclined to take a man home on their first date, not even if she’d known him her whole life long, but she brought Ethan up to her apartment. and she’s never once regretted a decision that some might call impulsive and others might cite as the best irrational act of her life. Here she is, thirteen years later, asleep on the couch when Charlotte brings in the tray of tea and toast. Jorie is Ethan’s wife, no matter what lies anyone might tell. She has pledged herself to him, now and forever, and on this moonlit night, she is dreaming of those lilies the flower shop on Front Street sets out on the sidewalk at Easter, flowers that look far too delicate to last, but if planted carefully in the garden will come back, season after season. Some things return, no matter what, like the constellations in the summer sky or the mourning doves that alight in bushes and trees in the gardens every year at this time, so that the last days of June are always accompanied by cooing and whispering: What can happen, what will happen, what ís meant to be.